Meet Sarah
Q&A with Sarah B. Laditka, MBA, PhD from University of North Carolina at Charlotte in Charlotte, NC.
I cared for many older patients who were acutely ill. I was inspired by their resilience and optimism. I was also deeply touched by their rich stories and experiences, and their wisdom.”
Q: Why did you become a member and what type of involvement do you have?
A: I became a member of the GSA when I began my doctoral studies at Syracuse University in 1992. I joined GSA because of my interest in aging and gerontology. I participate in GSA in a number of ways. I have attended more than 20 GSA Annual Scientific Meetings. I have mentored more than 15 masters and doctoral students in scores of research presentations at GSA annual meetings. I have been an abstract reviewer for many annual meetings, and have Co-Chaired sessions. I currently participate in two GSA interest groups, Epidemiology of Aging, and Brain. I serve on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences and have reviewed dozens of manuscripts for the Journal. I also regularly serve as a reviewer for The Gerontologist. I was elected as a GSA Fellow in Behavioral and Social Sciences in 2009.
Q: How has membership in GSA benefited you?
A: Being a GSA member has helped me to expand my professional network in gerontology. I have met many wonderful researchers at the GSA annual meetings. Several have become my research collaborators. Many are good friends and colleagues. They gave me useful feedback about my research, which helped me to improve the studies and publish them. Participating in GSA’s Annual Scientific Meetings and regularly reviewing manuscripts submitted to and published in GSA journals, helps me keep up with developments in gerontology.
Q: How did you get interested in the field of aging?
A: I have been interested in health and aging my whole life. I am a Registered Nurse and helped to manage a coronary and intensive care unit for six years in small community hospital, in a very rural, snowy, area of Central New York. I cared for many older patients who were acutely ill. I was inspired by their resilience and optimism. I was also deeply touched by their rich stories and experiences, and their wisdom. Based these experiences, when I entered graduate school I decided to devote my studies and my career to improving the quality of care and the quality of life for older people. I used every opportunity in my graduate studies at Syracuse University, first at the Whitman School of Management and then at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, to focus on topics related to aging and gerontology.
Q: Why is it important for other individuals to join GSA?
A: Joining GSA and attending the Annual Scientific Meeting is a great way to connect with researchers and stay up-to-date with research in aging and gerontology. Presenting your research at the meetings is a wonderful way to receive useful feedback. Participating in the poster sessions is an especially useful way to connect with researchers.
Q: What are your key responsibilities at your job?
A: One of my primary responsibilities in my current position is to mentor graduate students in professional development and research. I have served as the primary faculty advisor and mentor to more than 200 Master’s students of Health Administration (MHA) in the past seven years. Many of my MHA advisees are interested in aging and long-term care and also complete a graduate certificate in gerontology. During that same time, I have served as a dissertation Co-Chair for seven PhD students. My doctoral advisees have diverse backgrounds, including students from Armenia, Barbados, Liberia, and Nigeria, as well as students from the United States. Most of them presented research at GSA’s Annual Scientific Meeting. With the help of comments we received at the meeting, much of that research has been published.
Q: What has been your most memorable experience in gerontology and aging research?
A: My most memorable experience in aging research was participating in Promoting Cognitive Health, also known as The Healthy Brain Study (2005-2009), a project that involved more than 50 researchers at nine major universities in the United States. Our project was sparked by growing scientific evidence that physical activity, a heart-healthy diet, and social involvement may help to maintain brain health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded our project for four years. I was a co-investigator and managed the qualitative analysis of data from more than 75 focus groups, with more than 500 participants including older adults, caregivers of persons with dementia, physicians, and mid-level providers. The Gerontologist featured results from our study in a special issue published in June 2009, and our project supported more than 25 journal articles. A book just published by the Institute of Medicine, Cognitive Aging: Progress in Understanding and Opportunities for Action, cites many of those articles. Research from our study also contributed to new objectives focused on dementia in Healthy People 2020.
Q: Do you have any tips for emerging gerontologists?
A: This is such an exciting time for gerontology. The field of aging is vibrant. If you are considering gerontology, I encourage you to jump in and to join GSA! Participating in GSA is the best way to connect in our field. The Annual Scientific Meetings are informative and cover a wide range of topics. Gerontologists are a lot of fun. I encourage you to participate in the activities for Emerging Scholars and Professionals Organization (ESPO) at GSA. I did that and benefited a lot from the seminars as well as informal networking sessions. I encourage you to reach out to “prominent scholars” in gerontology. Gerontologists are very welcoming.
Q: Tell us a little about your most recent activities/accomplishments?
A: My current research focuses on active life expectancy. I helped to develop a new method to estimate active (or healthy) life expectancy, which is the percentage of remaining life that people can expect to live with and without substantial disability. The method I helped to develop and introduce to the field of active life expectancy addresses two challenges that are common in longitudinal surveys of health and disability, missing responses and variability in the length of the intervals between surveys. This method allows researchers to make better use of longitudinal data to improve life expectancy and disability projections. The United States and governments throughout the world now use active life expectancy to monitor trends in population health and to establish national goals for healthier lives.
In the past three years, I helped to make further methodological advances and have applied these advances using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the longest-running household panel survey in the world. As the PSID sample continues to age, this data set is becoming one of the most important resources for studying aging and the life course. My current research examines the dynamics of disability, chronic disease, and life expectancy for people in midlife and older ages using more than 40 years of data from the PSID.
My research using data from the PSID has recently been published in four articles. One study, published in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Disorders, found that among people with cognitive impairment, people with high education had longer lives and less disability than people with low education. Another study, published in Disability and Health Journal, highlighted the heavy toll of disability associated with stroke, particularly for African Americans, underscoring the importance of stroke prevention and treatment. A third study, published in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, found that much of the disability and mortality with diabetes was due to heart disease, obesity, and inactivity, risks that can be modified by health behaviors and medical care. A forth study is “epub ahead of print” in Disability and Rehabilitation. It showed that having multiple chronic conditions did not further reduce life expectancy, compared to having only one chronic condition, but that multiple conditions often increased the proportion of remaining life with disability.
Q: Have you had an important mentor in your career? If so, how did it make a difference?
A: My professional development and scholarship have been enriched by many wonderful mentors. My mentors include prominent scholars in aging, health and social policy, demography, and health economics at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and several other major universities in the United States. In my active life expectancy work, I am grateful to many members of Réseau Espérance de Vie en Santé, or REVES, an international group of researchers, for their mentorship and support. I have also learned so much and grown as a scholar and as a mentor through my work with more than 25 doctoral students.